Themes In Art And Videogames
The argument of whether videogames should be considered art one frequently voiced. To attempt a personal conclusion, I asked Google to define art for me; humans have been debating the true definition of art for thousands of years, but Google is made of internet-magic and is therefore smarter than humans. It found the answer in 0.19 seconds.
It answered: ‘The expression or application of human creative skill and imagination, typically in a visual form such as painting or sculpture, producing works to be appreciated primarily for their beauty or emotional power.’
There are several points in the above answer that can be related to videogames. The easiest is ‘...works to be appreciated primarily for their beauty or emotional power.’
It would be very easy to argue that there’s little pertaining to beauty or emotional power in a game of Halo, but I’d have to disagree. It’s certainly a different kind of beauty to that of an evocative sculpture, and a different emotional response.
A game’s beauty is primarily a mechanical one, the meshing of hard code with graphical fidelity to make an interactive experience. Taken as a still frame, few games can be seen as beautiful, but there’s a mechanical beauty to landing a jump spot-on whilst executing a perfect headshot. And there’s a subsequent emotional response, but it’s an adrenalin gut-punch rather than a moment of serene reflection. It’s this emotional hook that draws players into the next match, then the next, then the next.
So if videogames evoke the desired emotional response, why are most so disposable? We’ll play a game until its next mechanical upgrade, at which point the original is discarded. Very few videogames are ever considered one or two years beyond their release. A great videogame lingers long enough to see a sequel. Great art, conversely, is considered timeless, studied and appreciated for countless generations after the death of the artist.
The answer must lie in the first part of that definition, then; the ‘application of human creative skill and imagination.’ It is here that videogames, as primarily mechanical entities, fall short of consideration as art.
Most videogames are designed around a mechanic. This is most evident in the way we classify videogame genres; ‘the first-person shooter’ or ‘the racing game’. They are named for their central mechanic; ‘this is a game in which you will shoot from a first person perspective’, ‘this is a game in which you race against opponents on a pre-defined course’.
Art is rarely classified by the medium with which it was created. Paintings are not grouped into categories like ‘oil painting’, ‘watercolour’ or ‘pen-drawn.’ Rather, they are defined by the intention of the artist, by their ‘creative skill and imagination’; ‘expressionism’, ‘realism’ or ‘surrealism’. They explore concepts. They have themes.It would be foolish to dismiss mechanics as the least important aspect of a videogame – all a game is, at its heart, is a collection of digital mechanics dressed up to be aesthetically appealing – but it is the mechanics that fade first from memory. We don’t remember that Modern Warfare 2 had a refined aiming mechanic; we remember running through the burning ruins of the White House. It’s the imagery that is evocative, and will become the thing that people talk about when the game is discussed years later.
When considering the mechanics first, and the theme second, we are always going to creative technically accomplished yet ultimately forgettable experiences. A ‘theme’ encompasses everything but the mechanical aspects of a production; the tone, the aesthetic design, the use of audio. Other media such as film, literature and music – which fit the definition of art much easier than do videogames – focus on a theme, on an author’s intention. The final product, the technical accomplishment, is built entirely around this theme.
By creating a mechanic, then building a game around it, you end up with a game like Mirror’s Edge. Mirrors edge was mechanically interesting and inventive, and played excellently, but was let down by a complete lack of direction in any other aspect of its design. It’s levels were huge and bland, it’s setting lifeless and dull, it’s story inconsequential and poorly delivered, it’s conflict unconvincing and shakily executed.
The failure of experiments like Mirror’s Edge force companies to play it safe, to stick to established mechanical models without considering that the failure of that game was based on everything but its mechanics. It was mechanically accomplished, but artistically devoid of merit.
Rarely, games are designed around a theme rather than a mechanic, and the results are often those games that are discussed many years after release, and are the closest videogames come to art. Fumitu Ueda’s Ico and Shadow of the Colossus are probably the best-known examples. Each is built around a theme; ‘companionship’ and ‘overcoming unassailable odds’ respectively; and every aspect of those games - from the art direction to the core mechanics themselves - complement these themes.
The benefit shows in how these games are remembered. People still write articles on these games today, and Ico is now ten years old. Another example; 1991’s Another World - a singularly artistic vision, now twenty years old, that not only still stands up today but is often cited as a key inspiration for many recent influential indie games.
It’s true that for a videogame to work, it needs to be mechanically sound. But we’ve been designing videogames for long enough now that there’s no excuse for not getting the mechanics right. We got videogame mechanics right ten, twenty years ago.
If videogames are to be properly considered art, we need to take a step back from the technological arms-race and really consider how we design games. Rather than continually trying to inject more life into the medium through new mechanics, would it not be beneficial to use existing mechanical models to create real artistic vision?
If we take ‘first-person shooter’ for granted and factor it out of our design considerations, then we could focus on the aspects that make great art; on injecting real creative skill and imagination into game design. Creativity has already been proven to work in games; now it’s time for the industry to make it front-and-centre, to help the medium grow out of its confused adolescence and into an acknowledged art-form.
